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“To struggle in the face of opposition.” “To strive against rivals.” “To dispute and debate earnestly.

” Contend is not a passive word, as these phrases from various dictionary definitions make clear. Contending requires action. And while it may sound like something polite people simply don’t do, the fact is that we all contend. Asserting our opinion, vocalizing our likes and dislikes, broadcasting our beliefs, defending our position—whether our point is profound or trivial, most of us go through the day fully primed to pass along our views to others. Not on everything, obviously. But each of us will contend over those things that really matter to us. That’s how you know what people care about. Die-hard sports fans contend over the merits of their respective teams. People of differing political persuasions contend over parties and pragmatism, policies and power. Parents contend against whatever they think is harmful to their children. When something that really matters to you is under threat, that’s when you will be willing to contend—to struggle and strive, dispute and debate. The New Testament writer Jude (the brother of James and half-brother of our Lord) made an important point about this kind of principled striving when he wrote, “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”1 One thing we can draw from Jude’s appeal is that sometimes it is more important to defend the faith than to rehearse what we believe. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, Jude is affirming that there is a time and purpose for all godly behavior. To face inward, affirming and clarifying among and between orthodox believers everything God has done for us—this is a necessary, ongoing activity of the church. But that must not and cannot be our exclusive preoccupation. A complementary activity, a necessary accompanying activity is that at times we must also be intentional to face outward, contending with those who deny who God is and what he has done, whether these voices come from within the church or without. This is such a time.

The Christian church in the West has come to a strange place. Many of us are so concerned about being perceived as judgmental or exclusive that we present to the world a false picture of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Indeed, a whole generation of young people (both Christian and non) are focused on unity2 a to a degree that is not good for the church or the world. It’s not that Christians with a strong interest

in unity have wicked motives. We all want people to like us—and by extension to like Jesus—but when we place too high a priority on unity, we fail to contend for the faith.

Thom and Jess Rainer have published some helpful research on the Millennials, sometimes called Generation Y or Mosaics. Born between 1980 (ish) and 2000, this generation, while less monolithic than some previous generations, does have some clear tendencies. Paradoxically, they “tend to be upbeat, positive, and happy. But they are realists as well.”3 They place more focus on family (loosely defined) than their Boomer and Gen X predecessors, yet few Millenials give thought to religious matters, and overall they largely see ethnic, racial and sexual diversity as a nonissue. Mixed ethnic marriages and families are normal for this generation, where it certainly would have ruffled feathers in previous ones, and few have any concerns about same-sex marriage.4 They believe it’s their responsibility to make a difference in the world and have had enough of social division. Millennials are weary of the fights in our nation and world. They are tired of the polarization of views. They avoid the high-pitched shouts of opposing political forces. They are abandoning churches in great numbers because they see religion as divisive and argumentative.5 This, the Rainers suggest, may be this generation’s defining issue. The Millennials, especially the Christian cohort, grew up seeing their parents locked into “culture wars” that divided people over music and dress codes, food and drink, festivals and feasts.6 Frustrated by the seemingly endless quarrelling, they have declared their elders’ contending to be nothing more than “vanity, and a striving after the wind.”7 Having concluded that their parents’ efforts in these areas were ultimately futile, they’ve declared they’ll have none of it. “They want to know why we can’t all just get along,” explain the Rainers.8 I’m not pinning exclusive blame on the Millennials (who, by some definitions, I would be counted among). Their desire for everyone to “just get along” is understandable and, as we see in Jude’s letter, it goes back to the earliest days of the church. Doctrine or unity? The community of believers to whom Jude wrote his epistle had been infiltrated by false teachers intent on deception. These teachers were actively trying to turn the eyes of the Christian community away from Christ. Yet, instead of rejecting these apostles of Satan and their demonic doctrine,9 the believers accepted them. Perhaps it was out of simple naïveté or maybe theological ignorance, but whatever the reason, the Christians to whom Jude appealed did not recognize these teachers for the “fierce wolves” they truly were. The experience of Jude’s audience is far from unique. Christians in every age have suffered the attacks of false teachers. In the New Testament alone:

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Paul faced Judaizers and “super-apostles” who insisted that keeping the ceremonial law was necessary for our justification.10 The apostle John seemingly squared off against mystics who were more concerned with esoteric knowledge than the truth of the gospel.11 In his revelation to John, Jesus himself rebuked the Nicolaitans who sought to spread sexual immorality throughout the church at Ephesus and Pergamum.12

Since those days, the Church has repeatedly needed to be drawn back to Scripture, and away from the lure of false teaching. Here are just a few more examples.     Numerous battles were waged against various heresies in the first few centuries of the church. Augustine defended the doctrine of original sin against Pelagius in the fourth century. Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers’ upheld biblical authority over against the Roman Church in the sixteenth century. Evangelical stalwarts J.I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and J. Gresham Machen contended against the creep of liberalism and easy-believe-ism in the early- and mid-twentieth centuries.

In each of these cases, the counterattacks mounted by Christians were successful, in the sense that many believers were awakened to the danger of false teaching and renewed their commitment to sound doctrine. Inevitably, though, the Church’s fresh zeal would, over time, cool into passivity before slipping finally into apostasy—typically within the relatively short span of three or four generations. Where one generation believed the truth, the second assumed it and the third denied it, as D.A. Carson frequently reminds us. But in every instance, when truth is denied by one generation, God mercifully brings about a renewal in the next. False teaching today. Our own day is indeed desperate for renewal. In recent years, virtually no fundamental belief of the Christian faith has been free from assault, even from professing believers. The virgin birth, the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the sinlessness of Christ, even the necessity of the physical resurrection: everything seems open for debate.13 How did things get this bad? It boggles the mind, especially when we consider the sheer volume of solid, Christ-exalting books and sermons available in our time. Still, here we are. While there are no doubt many reasons for this sad development (and I’m not pretending that what follows is anything like a comprehensive analysis), I would like to try to tie together a few related threads. Thread 1: Millenials are especially inclined to the pursuit of a (perceived) unity.

Thread 2: The mainstream cultural air we breathe, being all about tolerance and political correctness, pressures us all, regardless of age, to embrace (perceived) unity as the highest good. Thread 3: Many Millennial Christians have been exposed to the weaknesses of Seeker Sensitive churches and modern Fundamentalism (we will review these influences in a moment). Thread 4: Responding or reacting to these various influences, many Millenials fled to various expressions of the emerging/emergent church. Tie these threads together, and you get a tangled, messy knot characterized by a de-emphasis of doctrine leading to a largely rudderless unity-for-its-own-sake. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back and look at what the unity-loving Millenials have mostly grown up with in Western Evangelicalism.

The Seeker Sensitive Movement. Birthed out of a genuine desire to see the lost come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, the Seeker Sensitive movement 14 sought to eliminate as many perceived barriers to faith as possible. In their view, perhaps the most challenging barrier facing the non-Christian was an emphasis on doctrine. Doctrine divides, or so the saying goes. So, rather than offering non-Christians doctrine-heavy expository preaching, it was thought better to attend to their felt needs with shorter, topical messages, dramatic presentations, and heart-warming music. And it worked. Sort of. Lots of people came through the doors of seeker-sensitive churches. Lots of people made professions of faith and began participating in church activities. But as time went on, it came as a rude surprise that these people weren’t necessarily growing in their faith. “We discovered that higher levels of church activity did not predict increasing love for God or increasing love for other people,” writes Cally Parkinson in Willow Creek’s Reveal study.15 People weren’t growing, nor were they taking ownership of their spiritual growth.16 Simply put, the seeker-sensitive model seemed to do a fine job of making converts, but a poor job of making disciples. “Our analysis paints the picture of the church being too preoccupied with the early growing years, leaving the spiritual adolescents to find their own way—without preparing them for the journey.”17 I’m not making a categorical statement that all seeker churches neglect discipleship, nor am I saying that God cannot work through these methods to accomplish his will. Indeed, my wife and I came to genuine faith at such a church. Looking back, however, it’s clear we were not discipled. We survived—and before long moved on to another congregation—because God was motivating my growth in ways that the leaders were not. Indeed, given the materials I was reading and listening to in my earliest days as a believer, it’s a wonder I wasn’t shipwrecked right from the start.

This discipleship issue—the failure to prepare the “spiritual adolescents” for the journey—is at the heart of the Church’s current predicament over contending for the faith. Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), Saddleback (Rick Warren), North Point Community Church (Andy Stanley), Elevation Church (Steven Furtick), Newspring Church (Perry Noble), Lakewood Church (Joel Osteen) and Oak Hills Church (Max Lucado) alone see a combined 144,000 people come through their doors every single week.18 Add in sermon downloads, books, blogs, conference appearances, etc., and the numbers rise far higher. The influence of seeker methodology is enormous, with hundreds of thousands in North America alone directly influenced by it on a regular basis. Of course, a primary focus of these churches is simply to get people in the door, and many of them succeed at this remarkably well. As a result, a great many people in the West who began calling themselves Christians not too many years ago are now active in local churches without having had the benefit of very much sound, expository preaching or effective discipleship. To put it another way, a large chunk of an entire generation of believers has been largely left to its own devices to figure out the Christian faith. Modern Fundamentalism. But the seeker sensitive movement is not the only force that has weakened Christian doctrine and practice in our day. Fundamentalism, in the modern, sectarian sense of the term, is equally responsible. Where the seeker churches are geared toward having a good experience and sometimes shave off the hard edges of the gospel in the process, fundamentalists have replaced the gospel with moralism, piling a burden upon the men and women in their congregations that is more than anyone could bear. Listening to the music of Amy Grant, reading any translation other than the King James, missing the Sunday evening service, even being happy at church meetings—in some places all these may be interpreted as signs that you’re out of the kingdom. Where the Seeker Movement frequently produces believers who lack a foundation in the gospel, Fundamentalism often produces believers who lack any assurance of the gospel.

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw evangelicalism abuzz over this thing called “the emerging church.”19 No one was quite sure what it was, but they were excited about it. Weary of what they perceived as the lack of authenticity in the Seeker Movement and turned off by the loveless, wrathful God of Fundamentalism, young(ish) pastors and leaders began looking for a way to reconnect Christianity with real life. They wanted a place where it was “okay to not be okay,” a place where doubts could be voiced freely, where questions could be asked without fear of negative consequences, and where authentic faith could come alive. But in their commitment to asking questions and expressing doubt—things we should never have a problem with—some forgot that there still had to be a foundation, a standard of truth. So while some questioned the way to “do church,” and some asked about how best to communicate the core truths of Christianity, others began to question the necessity or even the validity of basic Christian doctrines.

Did Jesus really have to be born of a virgin? Is the Bible really the inspired Word of God or is it merely a collection of folklore representing a nomadic people’s evolving understanding of God? Is the idea of hell consistent with a God of love? One writer within this movement made the alarming observation that, “the idea that there is a necessary distinction of matter from spirit, or creation from creator, is being reconsidered.”20 When you don’t understand that there are some things worth contending for, everything is up for grabs.

Today, although the emerging movement has more or less run out of steam, its influence is still powerfully felt, particularly as pastors and authors within its revisionist stream (now often called the Emergent church) continue to write books and blogs and, as in the case of Rob Bell, develop a television series as part of his goals to share “the message of God’s love with a broader audience.” Indeed, for many within evangelicalism, Bell is among the first who come to mind when they hear “emerging,” though he has done his best to avoid such labels. Raised in a traditional Christian home in Ingham County, Michigan, Bell studied at Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary before moving to Grand Rapids to study under Ed Dobson, pastor of Calvary Chapel, where he and his wife began to consider what planting a new kind of community would look like. In 1998, Bell planted Mars Hill Bible Church. In less than three years, weekly attendance ranged from 20003,500. A few more years, and that number had ballooned to between 8,000 and 11,000 per week. Despite the church’s success, it wasn’t long before Bell and his wife became uncomfortable with church. “Life in the church had become so small,” Kristen Bell says. “It had worked for me for a long time. Then it stopped working.”21 The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself— “discovering the Bible as a human product,” as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. “The Bible is still in the center for us,” Rob says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.”22 Weary of the black-and-white world of evangelicalism and burnt out from trying to do life as a “super-pastor,”23 Bell found comfort in Brian McLaren’s book, A New Kind of Christian.24 Chronicling the fictional relationship between disillusioned evangelical pastor Dan Poole and high school teacher/spiritual guide Neo (himself a lapsed pastor), A New Kind of Christian walks readers “through a series of set pieces that introduce the initially skeptical Dan to a ‘postmodern’ approach to Christianity”25—one that shuns the divisive nature of absolutes, the clear-cut categories of evangelicalism. It’s no surprise, then, that in Bell’s writing, as in many among this revisionist set, even the notion of contending is anathema, as we see in Bell’s derisive and ill-thought-out reference to what he calls “Brickianity.”

One of the things that happens in “brickworld”: you spend a lot of time talking about how right you are. Which of course leads to how wrong everybody else is. Which then leads to defending the wall... you rarely defend a trampoline. You invite people to jump on it with you. 26 This analogy is troubling for many reasons, not the least of which being that even a trampoline requires a sturdy frame to keep it together. But imagine I said to my wife, “Emily, I love you so much that I shouldn’t have to defend you when someone speaks ill of you. You’re cool with that, right?” What about if I said that to my children? How do you think that would go for me? This idea that we don’t need to defend—or at best rarely need to defend— something we love is ludicrous. If we are willing to offer defense for our families, our political preferences, and the Toronto Maple Leafs,27 how much more should we be willing to offer a defense of the gospel? If we truly love Jesus and if we truly care about the well being of the Church then we must contend. “People’s eternal fate is at stake. It’s not just that Jude is engaged in a fight against the heretics,” writes Robert Gundry. “With might and main his audience are to join in the fight.”28 Gundry is exactly right—people’s eternal fates are at stake and that is why we must contend.29 But knowing the stakes doesn’t make it any easier. There are a number of obstacles and attitudes that often prevent us from doing so at all, or at the very least hinder us from doing so in a Christ-exalting fashion.

There is a sense in which doctrine does divide. It can’t not by its very nature. Jesus himself—the Word of God made flesh—was and is the most divisive person ever to live. He himself said, “Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”30 The ultimate question about Jesus today is the same as when he walked the earth: is he or is he not who he claimed to be? He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”31 With the entire Christian faith standing or falling on the validity of such an utterly exclusive and uncompromising claim, doctrine that truly aligns with Jesus will cause division. When we discuss our faith honestly, it is simply inevitable: at times we will be at odds with others—friends, relatives, perhaps even other believers. Yet we are called to contend—in obedience to and for the sake of the most divisive person in history. How can we best do this? Here are two things to remember. Demonstrate humility: Christians can and must contend without being contentious. Just like Jude’s audience, we have been called by, purchased by, and kept for Jesus Christ. Whatever insights we may have into Scripture are not due to our superior intellectual or moral attainments—they are gifts from God meant to bring him glory and honor.32 This is why, in all our contending, we must reject “an unhealthy craving for controversy,”33 and “be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.”34

The contentious person is simply looking for a fight, someone “who stirs up division . . . is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned,” wrote Paul. When we read that we are to have nothing to do with such a person, it follows that we must not be like him.35 Instead, we must count others as better and more important than ourselves.36 While this is clearly a struggle for many Christians, to contend biblically is nevertheless to illuminate where un-biblical perspectives fall short without condemning, demonizing, or pretending to be superior to those who hold such views. Love others: Contending is not about making doctrine more important than people. Jesus’ message to the church at Ephesus is instructive for us on this point. In Revelation 2, we read: I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.37 Let’s trace the history here. The Ephesians had been warned by Paul in Acts 20:29 that fierce wolves would arise from among their own number. Thus forewarned, the Ephesians had tested their teachers and—by contending for the faith—had succeeded in resisting the lure of false teaching, thus keeping their doctrine pure. Praise God for this! Oh, that we would have more numbered among us who show that kind of care toward the teaching we allow into our midst. But Jesus’ message to the Ephesians doesn’t stop there. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.38 The Ephesians deeply loved the truth of the gospel and that love overflowed toward “all the saints,” giving the apostle Paul cause to rejoice.39 Yet, it seems that, despite their rock-solid doctrine and their wealth of love for one another, their hearts had become cold to the things that had once burned so warm within them. Sam Storms writes: What we see in the church at Ephesus, therefore, was how their desire for orthodoxy and the exclusion of error had created a climate of suspicion and mistrust in which brotherly love could no longer flourish. Their eager pursuit of truth had to some degree soured their affections one for another. It’s one thing not to “bear with those who are evil” (Rev. 2:2), but it’s another thing altogether when that intolerance carries over to your relationship with other Christ-loving Christians!40 The Ephesians were contending, yes, but without grace and love—and to Christ that very imbalance represented a serious violation of what it means to be his followers.

This should serve as a strong warning for us as we consider how we approach contending for the faith. We must not forget that there are people involved in every debate, both “those who are evil” and those who are, as Storms puts it, “Christ-loving Christians.” We’ll unpack this more in the following chapters, but our premise, and a key takeaway for this entire book, is simply this: Contending must be understood and exercised as an act of mercy toward those who doubt and those who have been deceived. We often see those with whom we disagree as something close to demons, when the truth is they’ve more likely just been duped. To miss this is to cause two great harms: 1) We disserve those who need a Savior. 2) We dishonor and misrepresent the Savior who has positioned and prepared us to serve. There is a tension in contending that requires us to uphold both people and doctrine. We cannot contend without love for people any more than we can contend without a love for truth. Sam Storms went on to say, “Doctrinal precision is absolutely necessary. But it isn’t enough. May God grant us grace to love others with no less fervor than we love the truth.”41 All of these—the reality that doctrine does divide, our confusion over contending and being contentious, and a natural tendency to put facts before people—are very real barriers to joining in the fight “with might and main.” But fight we must, for the sake of the gospel and for the good of others. The question we must now answer is, “Over what must we contend?” That’s the focus of the next chapter.
Jude 3 Two recent and helpful studies on this subject include The Millennials by Thom S. Rainer and Jess W. Rainer (Nashville TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2011) and You Lost Me by David Kinnaman (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 2011). 3 Rainer, The Millennials, 18 (Kindle edition) 4 Ibid, 87-91 (Kindle edition) 5 Ibid, 153 (Kindle edition) 6 cf. Col. 2:16 7 Ecc. 1:14 (see also 2:11, 17, 26; 4:16; 6:9) 8 Rainer, The Millennials, 153 (Kindle edition) 9 cf. 1 Tim. 4:1 10 Gal. 2:14; 2 Cor. 11:5,13-15 11 1 John may have been written to combat a form of proto-Gnosticism that sought to subvert Christianity with religious mysticism. 12 Rev. 2:6,15 13 For two helpful analyses, see Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by D.A. Carson (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2005) and Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches edited by Robert E. Webber (Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2007) 14 The best-known practitioners of this methodology include Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, IL, and Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, CA. In mentioning them, I am not
1 2

criticizing Rick Warren and Bill Hybels or their motivations, simply pointing to examples of what it looks like in practice. 15 Greg L. Hawkins & Cally Parkinson, Reveal: Where Are You? (Barrington IL: Willow Creek Resources, 2007), 35 16 Ibid, 54 17 Ibid, 55 18 According to Outreach Magazine’s 2011 edition of the top 100 largest and fastest growing churches in America, the combined total attendance of these churches is 144,247. Please note: while Osteen’s methodology is not dissimilar to that of many in the Seeker movement, his theology is generally in disagreement with that of the majority of the men shown on this list and within the Seeker Sensitive Movement as a whole. 19 A terribly unhelpful term because simply hasn’t been well defined and is often confused with the Emergent Village, which is the revisionist group within the emerging church. 20 Doug Pagitt, “The Emerging Church and Embodied Theology,” Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches, 142 (Kindle Edition) 21 Andy Crouch, ChristianityToday.com, The Emergent Mystique, accessed March 12, 2012, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/november/12.36.html 22 Ibid 23 Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 114 24 A man of whom D.A. Carson wrote in his blazing critique of the Emerging Church Movement, “I have to say, as kindly but as forcefully as I can, to my mind, if words mean anything, [McLaren] has largely abandoned the gospel.” (Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 186) 25 Crouch, The Emergent Mystique 26 Bell, Velvet Elvis, 27 27 While I’m not a hockey fan in general, I still find it bizarre that Leafs fans still hold out hope that this could be the year when they win the Stanley Cup. It’s been 50 years since they last won. The odds are not in their favor. 28 Robert H. Gundry, Commentary on First and Second Peter, Jude (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2011), Kindle Edition 29 Although even on this, Rob Bell would apparently disagree. 30 Luke 12:51 31 John 14:6 32 cf. 2 Pet. 1:3-8 33 1 Tim. 6:4; 2 Tim. 2:24 34 Titus 3:1-2 35 Titus 3:10-11 36 Phil. 2:3-4 37 Rev. 2:2-3 38 Rev. 2:4-5 39 Eph. 1:15 40 Sam Storms, To the One Who Conquers: 50 Daily Meditations on the Seven Letters of Revelation 2-3 (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2008), 50 (Kindle Edition) 41 Ibid